Lab Members

Ben Sandkam, PhD

Assistant Professor

Ben is interested in the interplay between genome evolution and mating behaviors. He earned a BS in Integrative Biology from the University of Illinois at Urbana-Champaign in 2009. In 2016 he completed his PhD in Biological Sciences at Simon Fraser University, where he studied the interplay between color vision and mate preferences. Next, he studied the genomic processes that shape rapid evolution of color vision as a postdoc with Karen Carleton at the University of Maryland, and as a visiting scientist at the NIH. He went on to receive a Banting Postdoctoral Fellowship to work with Judith Mank at the University of British Columbia, where he explored how genome evolution supports polymorphic reproductive strategies.

Ehren Bentz, PhD

Postdoctoral Researcher

Helen Stec

NBB Graduate Student

Helen is interested in brain and retinal morphological and genetic differences between the Poecilia parae sexes and morphs, and visual processing in general. In 2022, Helen earned a BS in Neuroscience from Ohio University.

Maximiliano Zuluaga Forero

NBB Graduate Student

Max comes from Colombia, the most beautiful and biodiverse country on earth. There he got interested in the genetic mechanisms that lead to behavior and shape the evolution of organisms. He earned his bachelor’s degree in Biology in 2019 at Universidad Nacional de Colombia and has been training in neuroscience tools useful to study how genes determine how animals behave. Max is now working to understand how epigenetic mechanisms shape the genome expression across the different male morphs of Poecilia parae.

Meridia Jane Bryant

NBB Graduate Student

Meridia is a violinist, writer, and scientist from Kansas. She earned her bachelor's degree from the University of Kansas and, in the process, developed a fondness for computational biology. After training with the NSF RaMP program at the University of Connecticut, she's now studying genomics with an interest in sex determination.